With his bushy beard and stocking cap, Zac Brown looks like he stepped out of rock's
jam-band
circuit. Although the Georgia farmer has scored two Top 10 country hits
in the past year, his Zac Brown Band is versatile enough to play the
Bonnaroo neo-hippiefest one day and the Country Music Association's Fan
Fair the next.

Bonnaroo "was my favorite show that we've done
in a long time," said Brown, 30, who will headline Monday at Mystic
Lake Casino."I love the challenge of being in front of people that
haven't heard us before. Good music is good music, period."

Whether
he's opening for B.B. King, ZZ Top or Keith Urban, Brown is right at
home. That's because he's about entertaining whomever shows up, not
about playing the Nashville game -- although he's pretty goodat that,
too. Last week, the Zac Brown Band won the fan-voted breakthrough prize
at the CMT Music Awards, for "Chicken Fried," their homemade first
hit.

The song celebrates life's simple pleasures--cold beer,
comfy jeans and fried chicken.Brown thinks the song is "a good
pacifier" in tough times.

Piercings instead of polo shirts
Last
month Brown opened for Urban at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. He was
running late for an interview because he'd lingered too long at
Willie's American Guitars, a shop in St. Paul.

"I'm obsessed
with cooking, knives and guitars," said Brown, who owned a gourmet
soul-food restaurant, Zac's Place, for a couple of years with his
father.

A serious acoustic picker, Brown has splurged on 15
vintage guitars since "Chicken Fried" went No. 1. At Willie's, he wound
up buying a dobro for a band member, but he had his eye on three other
vintage guitars, including one for ,000.

"He was very
unassuming, a nice, down-to earth, courteous guy -- and a good judge of
guitars," said Willie's owner, Nate Westgor. "He's still in touch with
one of our guys."

Growing
up the 11th of 12 kids in Dahlonega, Ga., about an hour north of
Atlanta, he played football and absorbed the music of his older
siblings and parents.

"When everybody [his age] was listening to
Nirvana, I was listening to James Taylor, JimCroce, Dan Fogelberg,
Gordon Lightfoot, Cat Stevens," he said. "James Taylor is the single
biggest influence I have, period. The James Taylor 'Greatest Hits'
tape, I stretched three of those till they just snapped."

Brown
ended up as the artistic child in the family. As a high-schooler he
started performing solo in coffeehouses, then studied voice at the
University of West Georgia and formed a rock band, Far From Einstyne.

"I
was the only one coming home with dreadlocks and tattoos and
piercings," he said. "Everyone else is pretty conservative.Most of them
are in the business world --khaki pants and polo shirts."

Don't
let his looks fool you. Brown is a serious dude. Take his involvement
with the Brain Balance centers that use physical therapy and nutrition
to treat children with autism and ADHD. Brown is helping to build a
camp in Georgia for children with severe disorders.

"I grew up
working at camps similar to this,"said Brown, who's married with two
daughters and another on the way. "You can see in one week the
difference you can make in a child's life. When you integrate these
mentally challenged kids with regular kids, they'll have a compassion
for those people for the rest of their lives."

Comfort food
Started
in 2002, the Zac Brown Band soon was playing 200 gigs a year. It
released a couple albums on its own, including a 2004 disc that
included "Chicken Fried." Its breakthrough album, "The Foundation," was
recorded in 2006 with Nashville producer Keith Stegall (Alan Jackson,
Billy Ray Cyrus,Terri Clark), but released nationally by Atlantic
Records just last November.

This spring, Brown hit the Top 10
again with "Whatever It Is," a sweet, breezy ballad inspired by his
co-writer, Wyatt Durrette, a bartender friend from Marietta, Ga.

"We
wrote it about his ex-wife," the singer said. "That word 'it' is a
substitute for a lot of emotions for things that you really can't put
into words."

That ol' bartender also came up with the key line
for Brown's new single, "Toes," a Jimmy Buffett-evoking beach ditty. "I
got a phone call about 6 in the morning from Wyatt in Virginia Beach
and he said, 'I'm sitting here with my toes in the water and my ass in
the sand and we've got to write a song about it.'

"The New York
Times described Brown's stuff as "country-rock comfort music." In
concert, the Zac Brown Band isn't afraid to go where other country
bands won't.

"It's about breaking down doors," he said."We have
songs that go reggae, funk, bluegrass. The world is ready for that
diversity, as long as the quality of it is there. There is so much
exposure to so many things because of the Internet. I am Southern and I
am country, but I love great music of all kinds."

For their
second Nashville release, the band plans to offer a live album with new
tunes, possibly later this year. Brown has signed three acts to his
Home Grown label; they will tour with him in the fall.

The band also is looking into mass-producing what has become its trademark--a Mason jar embossed with the band's name.

"We can stuff in them, and my family uses them for drinking out of at home," said Brown.

And that stocking cap?

"My
granny always said that you get the croup from cold wind blowing in
your ears," he explained. "So I grew up always covering up my ears when
it was cold outside. It's comfortable to me. I don't wear it to try to
be different. It's what I wear. It's important to be authentic and be
who you are.